


find your strength

by live_die_be, ShadedSilveringGrey



Series: beginnings of hearts [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Edmonton Oilers, Gen, The Author Regrets Nothing, sentient arenas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 01:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1369156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/live_die_be/pseuds/live_die_be, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadedSilveringGrey/pseuds/ShadedSilveringGrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she is old, and her shine has dulled and faded. her time is growing short, this she knows. she is a relic of another era, perhaps not a better one, but a different one indeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	find your strength

**Author's Note:**

> elly: psst that last tag is a lie i regret everything that led to this being my first contribution to the fandom. SAD SENTIENT STADIUM.

she is there. she is always there, watching and listening and loving every Soul who steps foot on her floor. she doesn’t know if they know she is there because she likes to think they would always tell her they love her if they knew. and it would make it all more bearable; she is old and weary with all that she's seen and felt and heard.

she is old, and her shine has dulled and faded. her time is growing short, this she knows. she is a relic of another era, perhaps not a better one, but indeed a different one. her walls once reverberated with joy but now resonate with heartbreak and bitterness.

she is shabby and worn down and breaking. but she is still there, always there, and she believes. she has always believed.

these Young Ones who now call her ice Home are the future; she is the past. she will watch them leave at some point. she is old; they are new. they deserve new, not her cheap façade of newness, but a fresh Home—a splendorous one—waiting to be filled with their vibrant youth, not this broken down building filled up to the ceiling with the past.

the Past is her comfort and her sadness, because the Past is memories. and memories always run together. she is there; she is here, and she always remembers.

there are memories here, some hers, some from players who passed through and brushed a hand against her walls, thoughts seeping through wood and stone and metal, consciences melding and embracing like mother and child, lover to lover .

there are memories of cups won and impossible joy. the sheer exuberance of the Souls within her halls still shines through her thoughts, a haze of golden happiness over the recounted faces. then memories of loss. of _leaving_. she does not understand why they must always leave, but Fate tells her it is right, but Fate doesn’t know her sorrow for her lost Souls. sometimes—sometimes she wishes that just once someone would stay, skate on her ice and love her for the rest of time.

but that can't happen. they always leave—leave for better things, better places than she is. she longs for them, and if they return wearing different colours, she welcomes them back with flickers of happiness and Home when they sit in her locker room to dress for the game. but she can’t help but feel a dull pang, a deep ache of remembrance and loss, because they no longer wear her family crest—her blue and white and orange crest.

she is there, and she always remembers. she remembers because she is always there, and she is always there because the game is hers to remember.

because she is the game. she is the ice and the seats and the cameras. she exists solely for the feel of skate blades on her ice and the roar of the crowd when a puck finds its way Home. the puck is blissfully dazed to rest in its Home, its Home is the net, and she rejoices with it and the sticks and the blades until the players and the audience and the media are all thrumming with emotion, the very air static with it.

she remembers when she was new and fresh and bright. she remembers the first time players skated out onto her ice, untouched and perfect. she remembers that her luster wasn’t always waxy and dull. she remembers.

she remembers her first love, really her only true love. she remembers that her gleaming features were once crowned with her Diamond of Diamonds, the Great One, the one adored by all. and she loved him, and he loved _her_. he made her great, and he brought her laurels and silver and names of the past bowing before her to show her own worth, to show his love. and even in the quiet moments, when no one else was there to see those precious things, he glided around her ice, slow and loving. he caressed her walls and leaned on her frame. they loved and were loved together ten years, and then he had to leave, and she wept and mourned. oh, how she loved _him_.

and she still loves him. she never forgets. she remembers the Great One and the way he felt moving through her hallways and on her ice. she greets him whenever he returns, reaching out with probing recognition and pleasure and he responds with nostalgia and faded memories of his time when she was his Home. she likes to think she still is his Home. after all, Home is where the Heart is, and his Heart never left her.

she remembers because she has to remember, because if she doesn’t have things to remember she won’t be able to believe. and she believes. she believes in those that still need her.

she thinks of her children, so swift and brave and bold. she’s proud of them all, but some are just above and beyond the rest. Taylor and Ryan and Nail and Jordan—she loves them, and they are her little gems adorning her benches and ice. they glitter wherever they are, and she feels so disappointed that she can’t be better for them.

she is not Home to these new players. they are new and bright and have Souls that sing with ice and metal blades. they skate on her ice, and they love the game, and they love her in their own way, but she is not their Home. they have lost so much on her ice. they have lost too much. she is their mother, and her anger and frustration is theirs ten times over, and she cries because she can’t give them the moon and stars.

she aches for them: for the fans and the players and even for the ones who throw things on her precious ice. she can’t help but feel anger at those who look down upon her sons who don’t deserve the mockery poured on them, but she can’t keep them from the hurt and tears. she listens to the booing of the crowd and the feels the frustration of the ice and sends helpless tendrils of calm-peace-love to her beloved players, but the feeling returns back to her, echoing and echoing in her halls because the calm-peace-love never goes anywhere, because they are hers but she is not theirs.

these New Ones, they shine so bright and move so fast and love the ice and the game and the pucks and the sticks and they may love her, but she will never be their Home because their Hearts never laid bare over her ice, viciously defending their spot of _her_. not Home like she was to the Ones who came Before

she is old and she is tired.

they can never stay. (they will _always_ leave.)

but she believes.

she will always believe. she is tired, and she is old. she remembers a time when her ice was lover—Home—to the one that they call Great.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> title from a poem by Rilke:  
> You too will find your strength.  
> We who must live in this time  
> cannot imagine how strong you will become—  
> how strange, how surprising,  
> yet familiar as yesterday.
> 
> We will sense you  
> like a fragrance from a nearby garden  
> and watch you more through our days  
> like a shaft of sunlight in a sickroom.
> 
> We are cradled close in your hands—  
> and lavishly flung forth.


End file.
